No more Nestlé
It's International Nestlé-free Week. Time to swear off Nescafé, Milo (*gasp*), Butter Menthol and Nestlé chocolate, yoghourt, frozen dinners and goddam Cheerios and find ethical alternatives. Sometimes a lack of joined-up thinking allows people who care about human rights (whole NGOs, in fact) to drink Nescafé. Or maybe they aren't familiar with the world's longest-running consumer boycott.
Nestlé is just the worst of a number of transnational corporations that market infant formula and other products as a substitutes for breastmilk. This is illegal and unethical because there are serious health risks associated with not breastfeeding babies. I am amazed at the number of immediate and life-long health benefits of breastfeeding demonstrated by mounting medical research. To summarise, babies that are not optimally breastfed have increased risk of:
- nutritional deficiencies
- asthma
- allergies
- respiratory disease
- diarrhoeal diseases
- parasitic infections
- childhood cancers (twice the rate)
- Crohn’s disease and colitis
- diabetes
- cardiovascular disease
- obesity
- gastrointestinal infections
- urinary tract infections
- ear infections
- osteoporosis
- poor mental development
- poor vision
- cancers of the reproductive system (in men and women)
- mortality (even in rich countries)
Inappropriate use of infant formula is often thought to be a 'Third World' problem, but even in rich countries “artificially fed infants require hospital treatment up to 5 times more often than those who are fully or partly breastfed.”
UNICEF estimates that 1.5 million babies’ lives could be saved annually by 6 months’ exclusive breastfeeding alone. And it is true that most of them are dying in impoverished countries.
Here are five brief documentaries on what formula companies are doing in the Philippines:
Formula for Disaster – Part 1 (8 min.)
Formula for Disaster – Part 2 (8 min.)
Formula for Disaster – Part 3 (6 min.)
Formula for Disaster – Part 4 (5 min.)
Formula for Disaster – Part 5 (4 min.)
As well as revising your shopping list, there is stuff you can buy online to support the campaign to end unethical marketing of infant formula.
Dear Olivia,
I read recently (in the Guardian I think) about how the US government had lobbied (successfully) to change the Phillipines laws restricting the sales of formula milk— rather sad and shocking.
Julie.
Bugger, I forgot that Maggi and Ski were Nestle. No five-minute noodles and Ski Yoghurt for me. And what on earth is the story about the Body Shop being sold to L’Oreal? How did I miss that? That’s where I get all my “beauty” products from – not that I use much.
Nestlé has lots of subsidiary brands. Look for Nestlé’s birds’ nest logo, often very small. Is it on Maggi and Ski labels? I presume it’s on all subsidiary products, but I’m not certain.
Anita Roddick sold The Body Shop to l’Oréal last year — and l’Oréal is a subsidiary of Nestlé!
[…] Is it even possible to make a populace smarter? One proven approach is to reduce environmental exposure to lead (in paint, petrol, water pipes, etc.) Pregnant women eating a diet rich in fish oils and choline (found in eggs and soy) appears to increase their child’s intelligence. The demonstrated link between breastfeeding and IQ makes the promotion and protecting of breastfeeding a poverty reduction strategy. […]
[…] No more Nestlé, rightsbase This is an example of a blog post from an advocacy group that has been caught in the midst of the WHO and UNICEF juggernaut. RightsBase without any hesitation supports the anti-formula message without indicating at anytime that in fact there might be some mothers who have a real need and choose to use formula for valid reasons. […]